Part Two of the The Real Housewives of Orange County Reunion began with Braunwyn Windham-Burke breaking down and sobbing.
But when confronted with her past actions, she offered a tearful and complete apology.
Kelly Dodd does not take criticism well, at all.
When Kelly was confronted with her mistakes from months earlier, she lashed out at everyone and everything, desperately decrying “cancel culture.”
“Kelly, it was so disappointing to see you call protesters looters,” Andy Cohen read a gently worded critique from a fan at the Reunion special.
“As a Mexican-American,” the fan question asked, “don’t you think you have a responsibility to stand with your fellow marginalized communities?”
For the record, Kelly also went on Instagram to watch footage of the historic BLM protests and brand them as “terrorism in America.”
“Listen, I don’t have anything with protesting …Peaceful protests — I’m all about it,” Kelly claimed.
Remember, 93% of the Black Lives Matter protests from last summer were peaceful.
The minority that were violent were usually a direct response to police escalation. But that didn’t stop Kelly.
“But that was on a whole other level that I saw in New York,” Kelly claimed, echoing widely mocked statements by The View villain Meghan McCain.
“There was looting,” she whined. “There was burning down buildings and I don’t think that’s the way to protest.”
(Fun fact: protests escalating to property damage has a history going back millennia — and in 2020, some of those protests turned out to be the most effective and prompting real change)
They then delved into Kelly’s tasteless decision to wear a “Drunk Wives Matter” hat at her bridal shower.
The hat was a gift, it was a stupid pun, and Kelly could probably have apologized for choosing to share the photo and just moved on … if her entire year hadn’t been full of malice and blunders.
Kelly defended it, and Elizabeth Lyn Vargas suggested that it was an innocent gaffe.
But Kelly had to go on and play the victim, using one of the most obnoxious and meaningless phrases out there: “cancel culture.”
“I wasn’t being malicious and I get attacked by this cancel culture,” Kelly whined.
She bemoaned her critics “that’s a bunch of haters that would never have any voice and here they are getting together and [coming] after me.”
“It’s not just haters though,” Braunwyn Windham-Burke quietly and politely pointed out.
“It’s people who have been oppressed,” she explained, adding that many of them have been finding their voices.
Kelly did not want to listen, so she decided to reach for every racist’s favorite line — I’m not racist, I have Black friends.
“Four of my best friends are African-American and they didn’t take offense,” Kelly yelled. Yikes.
The entire cast made the most awkward faces, as you can see in the clip. She insisted: “It’s white people who did!”
Obviously, even if we believe Kelly’s claim about her friends, no one person — or four people — speak for an entire race.
And the hat thing was the least of her wrongdoings in 2020.
Other fans questioned why Kelly would have a wedding at all during a pandemic. Either get married privately or postpone until the pandemic ends.
As you can imagine, Kelly handled that like she handles all criticism: poorly.
“But it’s okay to protest?” Kelly interjected. “Everybody can have a protest and be amongst a billion people? But I can’t have a celebratory wedding?”
A couple of things about the BLM protests: One, they were outdoor and masked events, and none of them were superspreader events.
Two, protesting against violence, murder, injustice, and systemic racism is an essential activity. Weddings can be special events, but they are not essential activities.
At one point during the reunion, Kelly exclaimed “I’M BLACK.”
She later explained that she did 23andMe to learn that she — by her own account — has Black, Asian, Mexican, Spanish, and Native American ancestry.
As if to remind everyone, she said the toxic “I don’t see color” line, which massively misses the point every time. Typical Kelly.
But we suppose that congratulations are in order for Kelly getting four Black friends, since that’s a huge step up from five years ago.
In 2016, she infamously said on camera that she did not “like Black guys,” adding “I don’t even know any Black guys.”
It is no secret that people with Black ancestry can harbor anti-Black sentiments against others or even themselves. Racism is a horror. And Kelly is just being awful.